Unintelligible Ramblings About Nothing of Importance

According to reports, my IQ is 125. This means approximately nothing to me, really. It’s just something I keep in my head, much like my ACT score. It serves no practical use in everyday life, nor is it high enough to make me a Mensa candidate. Essentially, all it really means is that I have some verifiable proof that I’m not the stupidest person roaming the planet (although at times, this would appear to be debatable).

For the sake of this particular diatribe, however, I deem my IQ score as relevant. Why? Because I am going to explain to you what has happened to my IQ score and why I no longer have one.

At age 26, I became a mother. Automatic 10 point deduction, as you have to give the child something to start out life with. Nutrients, blood supply and 10 IQ points. Similar to $100 and a bad suit for parolees leaving the pen.

So, I dropped to 115.

Throughout the next decade or so, I did a combination of waiting tables, bartending and managing restaurants. To wit: customer service. To that end, I had to deal with a LOT of people. Not all of those people were very bright, so the pull on IQ points was fierce. What saved me, however, was that I was in school during that time, so the combination of undergrad (when I showed up, which was rare) and law school served to balance out the loss/gain of points.

NB: Yes, I know that IQ is allegedly a native score, so you can’t simply ‘lose’ or ‘gain’ points. If you’re all itchy to leave a comment about how I’m totally misconstruing this whole IQ phenomenon, settle down. I’m aware of that. I’m using it for illustration only, so please just work with me here.

Assuming that the idiocy was counter-balanced with educational pursuits and academic stimulation, I remained at a constant 115 (because the kid stole 10).

Enter today.

At 6:00 this morning, I had all 115 points intact.

At the time of this writing (approximately 6-ish p.m.), it’s a wonder I can type. Or breathe on my own.

The drive to work was fraught with the usual idiocy, including the dummy in the Ford Expedition (so, how do you like paying 200 bucks each time you fill up that tank?) who couldn’t be bothered to stay in the thru lane and had to cruise over to the turn lane and then try to wedge his great big ass back into the thru lane five cars ahead. I have no idea why that pisses me off so much, but it does. If people would just stay where they’re at, things would move along a lot faster…but NOOOoooo, they have to shave that whole 1.4 seconds off of their commute time by being an asshole.

Once I got to work, things were fine. For about an hour. Then it just got ridiculous.

I won’t bore you with the specifics, but suffice it to say that nearly every single time I answered a phone call or opened an email, 5-10 IQ points would vaporize right from my brain. By 1:00, I was down to about 85 points.

I’d like to say that the IQ vaporization was a painless process and that I didn’t feel a thing, but I’d be lying. It was totally painful. As an added bonus, the loss of each point was directly proportional to the rising level of my blood pressure. I’m guessing it affected the diastolic more, but I know absolutely nothing about medicine, so that’s really just a shot in the dark (in reality, I’ve looking for a reason to use the word ‘diastolic’ all damn day).

Then the mail came. As a result of the unfathomable and jaw-droppingly stupid things I received in today’s mail, 15 more points joined hands, looked at each other gravely, put on their track suits and Nikes and simultaneously drank the Kool Aid. At the same time, I had a minor stroke, a massive coronary and probably developed a stress goiter (although, the goiter could simply have been the result of accidentally swallowing my own tongue while on the phone with someone who shouldn’t be allowed to use a phone).

I attempted to console myself by breathing in and breathing out. That ultimately turned into a one-woman Lamaze class and I had to stop doing that, as I was beginning to hyperventilate. In hindsight, I think the better option would have been to just hyperventilate myself into a short-lived fainting spell. At least I would have gotten a little nap out of the deal and perhaps just enough respite to re-gain control over things.

By 3:00, I had simply given up. I wandered around the office being useless and parking my ass in my boss’ office (which was completely stupid, given that his office lacks air conditioning). At 4:50, I felt I had put in sufficient time to call it a day.

The drive home was rather unremarkable, until I saw the latest price for gas. 3.69. God. I try not to get too agitated about things that I have no control over, but it still annoyed me for about 10 minutes.

Once I got home, the child showed me her science project. My role in this was to procure poster board, which I did on Sunday during my usual weekend economy-boosting. Apparently, my OTHER (and until-now unknown) role was to not kill her when I discovered what was now scotch-taped all over the poster board:

The guts of my hair dryer.

Yes, she took my hair dryer, unscrewed it (or, in the instance of one wily piece, broke it apart) and pulled out all of the wires, fan and random pieces of hair dryer innards. She then taped them to the poster board and labeled them.

Here is what remains of my hair dryer:

I don’t know what the little popsicle stick is for, and I probably don’t want to.

I think it goes without saying that my head exploded at that point.

It would behoove me to take a shot of NyQuil and call it a day and hope that tomorrow presents itself as redemption for today, but that’s just not in the cards. I have a good 3 hours or so of actual work that has to get done…so that’s what I’m going to attempt to do. With any luck, my headless body will be able to type up appropriate things in appropriate places and the finished products will not get anyone sued.

Kind of a lot to ask for a headless woman with an IQ point shortage, don’t you think?